Society of Robots - Robot Forum

Electronics => Electronics => Topic started by: unicoder on May 09, 2009, 04:53:16 PM

Title: What initial hardware is recomended?
Post by: unicoder on May 09, 2009, 04:53:16 PM
Ok since I first started blabbing on this board here is what I have accomplished:
Make a full wave power rectifier with variable output regulator(the easier part with my Industrial Elec background).
I hooked an M10FMAXQDC to a home made TTL->RS232 circuit. (It is a pain using the chip pried out of an SMD socket).
Made the M10FMAXQDC turn an LED on with a button press. (Funny thats about all it did in the monitor i ripped it from.)
Wooo. Not enough program space with out the EEPROM and RAM I left sitting on the monitor's circuit board.

Im looking to drop $100 on whats needed.

Can you help me pick an MCU?
I saw the SOR kit from a link somewhere on here but the one i looked at was over my budget. Nice looking though. I have no problems putting it together, I just don't want to get a crap MCU with low memory or like 2 programmable I/O's.
Title: Re: What initial hardware is recomended?
Post by: Razor Concepts on May 09, 2009, 04:57:22 PM
Arduino! Possibly the best microcontroller development platform. It has a huge community of users, and excellent software. The software side used to program is called Arduino, and the matching microcontroller boards are the Arduino Diecimilla (and a lot of clones exist for different purposes). The software is free and the Diecimilla is around $30. It's cheap and its great.
Title: Re: What initial hardware is recomended?
Post by: SmAsH on May 09, 2009, 05:05:27 PM
i would go for arduino or roboduino because of price,
you say $100? the axon is now $100... with the sale and all...
Title: Re: What initial hardware is recomended?
Post by: unicoder on May 10, 2009, 04:31:40 AM
That axons look like a decent bang for buck item. I think ll get one of those. I was wondering where i saw the ad lol.
Title: Re: What initial hardware is recomended?
Post by: SmAsH on May 10, 2009, 04:36:10 AM
get it quick, admin is discounting them because he needs to clear space for axon 2...
http://www.societyofrobots.com/axon/ (http://www.societyofrobots.com/axon/)
Title: Re: What initial hardware is recomended?
Post by: unicoder on May 10, 2009, 11:01:28 PM
Haha tbh Ill get it even if it gets bumped up to the 150-180 area. Unless the newer one gives me more I/O and more program space. Im going to need alot for my project. I can understand the work that goes in to making noob friendly items. Especially ones that will eventually go on the market :P I wont begrudge a 50-80$ deviation from my original 100$  ;) Thanks though. Ive already started writing test code with AVR Studio and some others. Also using AVRora. Gonna have to whip up some JFrames for it tho. I cant stand cmd prompt.